


A Practical Demonstration

by marycontraire



Series: Nor Pomp Nor Blare [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing Lessons, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Silencing charms are a lazy deus-ex-machina and I refuse to use them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 00:35:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14032278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marycontraire/pseuds/marycontraire
Summary: “Come on, mate,” Seamus says, uncharacteristically quiet.  “You know I’ve never.”Dean raises his eyebrow again, enjoying, for the moment, the superior feeling of being more worldly and experienced: for so many years, he was the clueless Muggle-born and Seamus was the one explaining everything.Dean tries to teach Seamus to kiss.  It does not go well.





	A Practical Demonstration

**Author's Note:**

> One of Dean's lines is lifted straight from the lovely film _As You Are_ ; if you recognize it, I approve of your choices.
> 
> Also, how weird is it that _Harry Potter_ is essentially 1990s period fic now? I had a hell of a time looking up what Dean's neighborhood in London would have been like back then.

Seamus has gotten quite clever at working a “So, mate, tell me about Kaia,” faux-casually into conversations when Dean is least expecting it, so, by this point in December, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise. But of course it does, and Dean groans and casts his eyes upward in a _God, give me strength_ sort of way, although the canopy of Seamus’s four poster offers little in the way of divine intervention. 

“Oh, come on,” Seamus bitches. He is momentarily distracted, though, because his hand of Exploding Snap cards chooses that moment to go off with a _bang!_ and set his bedspread aflame.

Dean extinguishes the fire with a lazy flick of his wand; being best mates with Seamus Finnigan has given him ample opportunity to practice conjuring water, and he can now do so without even voicing the incantation aloud. 

Seamus draws a new hand -- they’re playing Twenty-Five, an Irish game Seamus got him hooked on in first year -- but he isn’t distracted from his line of inquiry.

“You’re holding out on me, Thomas; I know it.” 

“I’m doing nothing of the sort. I’ve already told you everything there is to tell.” This is, of course, a brazen lie: Dean has told Seamus only the bare minimum about Kaia, and, indeed, about his summer -- the part of it he’d spent in London, anyway. 

Seamus, who has an annoyingly low tolerance for bullshit given the amount of it he spouts himself, snorts derisively at Dean before making his play.

Dean pretends to be absorbed by his cards as he starts in on the same abridged tale he’s told Seamus at least once a week since August. “There was nothing to do in my neighborhood once I’d finished all my summer homework -- in the first week mind you -- and all my little sisters were in this summer enrichment program because my parents are dead set on getting them scholarships to public school for secondary.” This is mostly true, except for the bit about his neighborhood. He lives in a dodgy part of Stratford, East London, and there’s plenty of trouble to get into there, which is precisely why his parents don’t want his sisters going to the local comprehensive school -- all of the students there Dean’s age spend the summer partying and getting arrested, according to Dean’s parents. “So I started hanging round with some of the lads from the Carpenters Estate, and I met Kaia at one of their parties. She kissed me on a dare in some dumb game, and we hooked up a few more times after that.” Dean doesn’t mention that the lads from the estate were mostly fifteen and sixteen year olds. They accepted him easily because he’s grown so big in the last year that he passes for being much older than he is: he’s never been asked for I.D. buying alcohol in his neighborhood, and he can quite take care of himself in a fight, having dragged the small-but-short-tempered Seamus out of so many at school. 

Dean’s parents were livid when they finally discovered that Dean was “running around with a bunch of council estate delinquents,” partying and drinking and fighting. It is, in large part, the reason why Dean was sent to visit Seamus in Ireland for the first time in August, before the Quidditch World Cup.

“We shouldn’t be _rewarding_ his terrible behavior,” his mother had said angrily when Seamus’s invitation arrived.

“I agree, love,” his step-father had said, “but how are we supposed to keep him under house arrest when we both work all day? And, really, how much trouble can he get into in _rural County Cork_ in a town with more sheep than people?” (Seamus actually lives on the Beara peninsula, and his father is a fisherman, not a shepherd, but Dean supposes his dad’s point was more figurative than literal anyway.)

His memories are interrupted when his own hand of cards inconveniently explodes. Dean swears, more because he’s just lost a trick than because it really hurts. 

_“Aguamenti,”_ Seamus casts, and cool water runs over Dean’s hand. “And you know that’s not what I want to know.”

“What _do_ you want to know?” Dean asks. He’s not really ready -- doesn’t think he ever will be -- to share Kaia with Seamus. Her coy smile, the way she flipped her millions of long, skinny braids over her shoulder, the feeling of his hand around her narrow waist, his fingers brushing over her breasts: these intoxicating secrets are all his to keep, even though Kaia has certainly moved on to some new conquest in his absence.

“What was it like?” 

“What was _what_ like?”

 _“Kissing.”_

Dean looks up at Seamus and raises one eyebrow at him -- a particular talent of his. Seamus’s pale skin immediately flushes pink, and he looks down, clearly embarrassed.

“Come on, mate,” Seamus says, uncharacteristically quiet. “You know I’ve never.”

Dean raises his eyebrow again, enjoying, for the moment, the superior feeling of being more worldly and experienced: for so many years, _he_ was the clueless Muggle-born and Seamus was the one explaining everything. “Neville seems to think you have,” he accuses. 

Seamus shrugs, but he’s still pink and still studying his hand of cards. “I didn’t _lie_ to him. He just assumed.”

“And you let him,” Dean says.

“Alright, alright, I’m a terrible person!” Seamus says, gesturing wildly and looking up at last. “But you’ve got to help me out, mate, because I think it’s gotten back to Lavender, and what if she expects me to kiss her at the Yule Ball and I don’t have any bloody feckin’ clue what I’m doing?”

“Er,” Dean says, “Not sure what I can really tell you, mate. It’s sort of… instinctive? I mean, I don’t think you can screw it up too badly.” 

Seamus glares at him. “Have you _met_ me?” he asks witheringly. 

“Good point,” Dean says, and Seamus punches him in the shoulder. “Okay, okay. Well. You should really close your eyes, or you’ll look like a pervert.”

“You are the _least_ helpful. Jesus. You’re enjoying torturing me, aren’t you?”

Dean grins. He’s never told Seamus, but he loves it when he says _Jesus_. It sounds more like _Jay-sus_ in his accent. “Just a bit,” he concedes. “I mean, the obvious mistake is using too much tongue. Don’t do that. No one likes that. But the most important thing is to sort of… vibe it out. Figure out what she’s feeling and go with what she likes.”

“So,” Seamus says, still glaring, “what you’re saying is, at some point in the next week, I’m going to have to develop telepathic powers. That’s very helpful, Dean, thanks.” (When Seamus says _thanks_ , it sounds more like _t’hanks;_ Dean loves that, too.)

“Of course you won’t be able to read her _mind,_ you flaming idiot,” Dean says. “But when you’re that close to someone, you can kind of, like, read their body. Sort of. It’s hard to explain.”

“Really? Because you’re doing a brilliant job so far.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Dean says, throwing down his cards. “Quit your whining and come here.” Dean, who has been lounging back against Seamus’s headboard, sits up, reaches down the bed, grabs Seamus around the shoulders, and drags him up towards him. 

“Shite!” Seamus half-yells. “What are you doing, you half-giant oaf?” (Seamus has recently taken to suggesting that Dean’s mysteriously absent biological father was likely a giant. Dean’s been letting it slide because he knows that Seamus is just self-conscious of being the shortest Gryffindor boy in their year.)

“I’m teaching you to kiss, you ungrateful wanker,” Dean says, manhandling Seamus so that he’s sitting across from Dean, just a bit diagonally. 

“Isn’t that sort of… bent?” Seamus asks, oddly quiet again.

“It’s extremely bent,” Dean confirms. “If you’d rather wait until Christmas for Lavender Brown to school you, please be my guest.”

“No! Jesus. Okay,” Seamus agrees, breathing heavily.

“Well, the first step is to stop having a panic attack,” Dean says drily. “I’m not a fucking Dementor.”

“Right,” Seamus agrees, still hyperventilating, suddenly unable to meet Dean’s eyes. Seamus’s eyelashes, like his hair, are sort of sand-colored, but they’re also unusually long and curl elegantly outwards -- Dean has always liked drawing Seamus’s eyes for this very reason, though he knows better than to comment about it aloud after that one time Draco Malfoy accused Seamus of looking looking like a girl and Seamus exploded his cauldron. Dean finds himself studying them now, though, as Seamus’s eyes are still turned down to his own lap. Seamus doesn’t have freckles like Ron Weasley has freckles, but he does have a light smattering of tiny ones across the bridge of his astonishingly pale nose. 

Dean reaches out and wraps a hand around the back of Seamus’s neck, momentarily fascinated by the contrast of his dark skin against Seamus’s pallor. Dean meant what he said about being able to read someone’s body when they’re this close; he can feel the tension in the muscles of Seamus’s neck and shoulder.

There is another loud _bang!_ and Seamus jumps up several inches, startled. 

_“Depulso!”_ Dean says, waving his wand and banishing the troublesome deck of cards to Seamus’s bedside table. Then he casts a spell to close the curtains of the four poster, mutters a quick _“Lumos”_ to counteract the sudden darkness inside the canopy, and stashes his wand next to Seamus’s pillow. “Ready?” he asks.

“I guess so,” Seamus agrees, though his body feels electric with tension beneath Dean’s hand.

“Try not to crash into my nose,” Dean advises.

“Right.”

Then there’s nothing for it but to lean in. With Kaia, the first time, he’d just gone for it straight away, to the appreciative hoots and hollers of the crowd of friends around them. She’d kissed back enthusiastically, and her mouth had tasted like the vodka-and-cranberry concoction they’d been drinking. Dean senses, though, that Seamus isn’t so ready as she was, so the first touch of their lips is just the smallest brush of contact, and he repeats the gesture several times until Seamus seems to have calmed slightly -- then he presses their mouths together and moves his hand to the base of Seamus’s skull to angle his head up for better access. Seamus makes a surprised noise at first contact with Dean’s tongue, and Dean can feel it vibrate through Seamus’s neck to his hand, through Seamus’s mouth to his own.

As Dean’s fingers slide through the overgrown hair on the back of Seamus’s head, he realizes that he’s never really touched Seamus’s hair before. It’s thick but smooth, and the uneven ends of it brush tantalizingly along the inside of Dean’s wrist. It feels completely different to his own. And Kaia’s -- well, Dean tried to get his hands into it once when they were snogging, and she pushed him right off and asked _did he know just how long it took to get those braids done?_ That was the end of that idea. 

Seamus doesn’t seem to mind; even when Dean pulls on it a bit, he makes a noise that sounds more pleased than pained, and he arches as Dean leans his head back still further, which is --

“We’re doing this wrong,” Dean huffs out, breaking off suddenly. 

“What?” Seamus pants, his hair now a wild mess, his face more flushed than Dean’s ever seen it, even in the uneven wandlight. “I thought it was good.” Dean can tell he regrets saying it a moment later because his pulse beneath Dean’s fingers speeds up and he tries to avoid Dean’s eyes again.

“Not that, you idiot,” Dean says. “I’m taller than you. Lavender won’t be.” This is possibly untrue -- Lavender is only about two inches shorter than Seamus, which means that in heels she may very well be taller than Seamus, but not as tall as Dean, certainly. “Come here,” he says, shifting his arm from Seamus’s neck to his lower back and sort of scooping him into his lap. This has the intended consequence of bringing Seamus’s face closer to level with Dean’s own, but it also means that Seamus is suddenly straddling Dean and looking very surprised about it -- perhaps Dean should have thought harder about that one. He’s supporting some of Seamus’s weight, still, with an arm against Seamus’s lower back, and Seamus has one forearm braced against Dean’s chest, hand curled over his shoulder tentatively. They’re both already in their pajamas, and Seamus, who tends to run cold, is wearing a woollen sweater over his t-shirt, but Dean, who tends to run hot, is shirtless. It didn’t seem strange earlier, but now that he can feel the itchy woollen arm of Seamus’s sweater against his bare chest, he’s keenly aware of the disparity.

“You lead this time,” Dean instructs. 

“Come again?” Seamus says.

“Well, maybe you’ll get lucky and she’ll just lay one on you,” Dean says, suggesting with his tone just how likely he thinks this is, “but I sort of suspect you’re going to have to man up and kiss her yourself.”

“Right,” Seamus says. “Right. Do I just --?” He tentatively raises his other hand to cup the back of Dean’s neck, his thumb laying against Dean’s jaw.

“Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t think you do,” Dean says. “Girls don’t like insecure blokes.”

“Right,” Seamus agrees, and Dean can feel -- even through the world’s thickest fucking wool sweater -- the shift in his muscles when he steels himself to just go for it. Seamus shakes his too-long fringe out of his eyes with a jerk of his head that catches Dean by surprise and makes him feel as though he’s just touched an active portkey -- and then he’s leaning in and pressing his lips to Dean’s. 

Dean intends to follow Seamus’s lead, let him try this for himself, he really does. But it isn’t long before he loses sight of the reason for this exercise and grows impatient with Seamus’s reticence and, almost without realizing it, he’s burying his free hand back in Seamus’s hair and tilting his head where he wants it; Seamus obliges. 

Dean can feel Seamus running his hand across the back of his own head and wonders if Seamus is similarly fascinated by the alien texture of his hair. He breaks away from the kiss but doesn’t pull his head back. Into Seamus’s ear he whispers, “Just a tip, mate -- if she’s done some fancy hairstyle, you’d best not touch it.”

When Seamus laughs, Dean can feel the puff of breath ghost hotly past his ear. “You learn that the hard way?” he whispers.

“You know I did,” Dean says. He presses a gentle kiss into the space just below Seamus’s ear, where the column of his neck meets his jawline. He can feel Seamus inhale. He licks the space just below Seamus’s jaw and then, on impulse, bites down. Seamus makes a sharp sound and his torso, still surrounded by Dean’s arms, spasms -- but Dean doesn’t think it’s in a bad way. This is the part where Kaia would smack him gently upside the head and tell him firmly to mind that he didn’t leave any marks. But he and Seamus are miles from anyone’s prying parents, and they’re both wizards besides -- surely there are spells for healing or, at the very least, concealing bruises? Dean can feel Seamus’s back arch as he kisses his way down his throat.

He growls in frustration when his path is intercepted by the collar of Seamus’s heavy sweater. “Mate,” he says into Seamus’s neck, “I don’t know how you sleep in this bloody ridiculous thing.”

“I get cold,” Seamus pants in response.

“You cold now?”

“N-no…”

Dean moves both arms to the waist of the sweater and yanks it roughly upwards. It takes Seamus a moment to get with the program and lift his arms up, and then Dean is hauling the hateful thing over Seamus’s head. It hadn’t been his intention to dispose of Seamus’s t-shirt as well, but Dean finds that he’s pleased when it sticks to the inside of the sweater and and comes off with it. 

When Seamus has finally struggled his head free of the garment, his sandy hair is even more insane than it was before, his eyes are wide, and he doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. 

Dean places his own on Seamus’s hips and slowly, gently drags them upward, feeling the contours of Seamus’s body as he goes. Where Dean now has clearly shaped muscles, Seamus still only has the willowy slenderness of an adolescent. He shivers and shuts his eyes when Dean’s fingers skim over the sides of his stomach -- Seamus has always been tremendously ticklish there, and Dean has always exploited that weakness. He exploits it now in a different way, reveling in the spasmodic jerks and sharp intakes of breath he’s able to elicit. When he shifts his hands up to Seamus’s upper back, he can feel Seamus’s ribs expanding and contracting below his palms with each heaving breath. He is, Dean suddenly thinks, beautiful. Not in the same undeniable, feminine way Kaia was, but beautiful just the same.

“Hang on,” he breathes.

Seamus takes the instruction literally, winding his arms around Dean’s neck. Dean, with some difficulty, lifts him by his hips and deposits him roughly on his back, his head at the foot of the four-poster bed. Dean collapses on top of him with less grace than he might have desired, catching himself on his forearms on either side of Seamus’s head in a sort of half-press-up. They’re farther away, now, from Dean’s lit wand, and Seamus’s face is mostly in shadow.

“Hey,” he says quietly.

“Hey,” Seamus says back.

Dean dips his head down and presses a quick kiss to Seamus’s eyebrow. This elicits a little puff of laughter, which Dean extinguishes a moment later by going in for another open-mouthed kiss. Seamus slides his hands over Dean’s back, seeming to feel the movement of each muscle as Dean smothers him. Dean can feel his back arch pleasantly and involuntarily when Seamus’s fingers run up and down the line of his spine; he groans into Seamus’s mouth. He has Seamus pretty firmly pinned against the mattress, and, as he sweeps his tongue over Seamus’s lower lip, he realizes with a start that he can feel Seamus’s prick pressed against his stomach, and it’s _hard._

His own is, too, of course, but that’s infinitely less surprising; he, after all, knows where snogs like this one tend to lead.

“Shit, Seamus,” he gasps, and he begins a slow but determined journey south, kissing and biting along Seamus’s neck, and then along his chest, as Seamus writhes beneath him and tries, unsuccessfully, to hold back noises.

The silver medal Seamus has never taken off in all the years Dean’s known him is lying on a chain between Seamus’s nearly-flat pectoral muscles. He’s let Dean touch it before -- on the outside is the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus, and on the other are some ancient Irish protection runes. Dean presses a kiss to it now and is surprised to find it warmed by Seamus’s skin; somehow he’d expected the metal to be cool. 

Seamus freezes instantly. “Don’t,” he says.

“Sorry,” Dean breathes into his chest. He moves his head to the right and presses a kiss into Seamus’s nipple -- Kaia loved that, but he wonders if it might be different for boys.

“Don’t,” Seamus repeats, and he’s writhing once more, but the timbre of his movements has changed completely. 

It takes Dean a moment to realize that Seamus is trying to push Dean’s body off his own, but he can’t because Dean is too big and Seamus isn’t strong enough.

“Hey!” Dean says, shifting so that his face is hanging over Seamus’s again, wishing he could see it better in the dark. “What the hell? Calm down! What happened?”

“Get _off!_ ” Seamus nearly yells, pushing at Dean’s shoulders ineffectually and kicking out with his legs but unable to hit Dean, whose body is pressed between them.

“Alright! Alright!” Dean says hastily, pushing himself up and sitting back on his heels. He grabs his wand from beside Seamus’s pillow and holds it up to cast the light on Seamus’s face. 

Seamus flinches and raises a hand to shield his eyes from the brightness of the wand tip. He looks angry and scared. “Why the hell did you do that?” he demands.

“Do what?” Dean says. “Touch your medal? I’m sorry! I didn’t realize it was off-limits.”

“No!” Seamus says angrily. “Why the hell did you _kiss_ me like that?” 

Dean is so gobsmacked by the absurdity of this question that he’s actually shocked into slack-jawed silence, something he previously thought only happened in cartoons and sitcoms on the Muggle telly. When he finally regains his powers of speech, all he can think to say is, “You bloody well liked it, too, Finnegan, and don’t even try to deny it!”

Shamelessly denying an obvious truth is actually fairly typical of Seamus when he’s feeling defensive, so Dean is more surprised when he doesn’t. “You bloody well know I liked it, Mr. Vibe-It-Out! That’s the feckin’ problem! Dean, I can’t like _kissing boys!”_

Dean’s still shocked enough to be feeling mean, so he says, “Mate, we left kissing behind several road signs ago.”

The anger drains out of Seamus’s face, leaving behind only a desperate sort of fear. “Dean,” he pleads, “my parents would _kill me._ I’m their only son! You’ve bloody met them; tell me I’m wrong.”

Dean _has_ met them, is the thing. They’re warm, loving people, and he likes them very much. But Mrs. Finnegan, not just a witch but also an Irish Traveller, takes religious observance to extremes Dean had never encountered prior to this August. Mr. Finnegan strikes Dean as more a passive Catholic than anything else, but he very obviously wants his son to be a man, and during Dean’s visit he subtly criticized him for cracking jokes rather than throwing punches when the local kids had him cornered, for being bad at sport, for crying once when he was hurt, for letting his mother and sisters “spoil him rotten.”

Dean knows he isn’t wrong; his lingering silence is answer enough. 

“Just,” Seamus says, obviously close to tears. “Just go back to your own bed, and we’ll pretend it never happened, okay?”

It’s not okay, and Dean glares down at Seamus to communicate this.

It is at this precise moment that Harry, Ron, and Neville choose to return, loudly, to the dormitory.

Seamus once again freezes in terror.

Through the bed curtains, Dean can hear Ron saying, “Well if she’s not bloody going with you, then who the hell is she going with, then?”

“I don’t know, Ron,” Neville says, sounding weary.

“I mean, who the hell else is she even friendly with? Harry?”

Dean can hear the sounds of all three of them discarding robes, banging open trunks, and rooting around for pajamas. Across from him on the bed, Seamus looks moments away from a genuine panic attack. Moving slowly, he reaches out to draw Seamus against his chest, placing a hand firmly over his mouth to muffle his startled sounds as he does so. “Shh,” he breathes into his ear. “They’ll have to go back out in a moment to brush their teeth.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ron!” Harry says through the curtains, sounding as weary as Neville, and several shades more annoyed besides. “If I knew, you know you’d be the first person I’d tell. Clearly she’s enjoying keeping us guessing, and you’re the one that keeps falling for it! If you just act like you don’t care, maybe she’ll tell us.” 

The three of them bang back out the door, presumably in the direction of the Lower Forms Boys’ Bathrooms, at about the same time. Dean releases Seamus and rubs his back in what he hopes is a reassuring and non-sexual manner.

“Jesus,” Seamus says. “Jesus, fuck. Do I look like I’ve been…?” His question trails off. His hair is still messier than Dean’s ever seen it, his bare chest is covered in rosy bite marks that are all the more obvious because he’s so pale, and his tartan flannel pajama pants are doing little to conceal the fact that he’s still half-hard.

“You look like you’ve been snogged to within an inch of your life,” Dean tells him honestly. 

“Fuck,” Seamus says.

“Here,” Dean says, grabbing Seamus’s inside out sweater and peeling the t-shirt out from inside it. “Put these back on.”

“Excellent,” Seamus complains. “Now that I’m boiling.”

“Shut up and put it on,” Dean says, throwing both articles of clothing at him. “It’ll cover the marks. You’d better wear sweaters for the next few days, too, mate. Ones with high collars.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Seamus says through a barrier of cable-knitted wool. “Your biological father was actually a vampire.”

“Shut up and pretend to sleep,” Dean says, opening Seamus’s curtains with another flick of his wand and blinking in the sudden light. “I’m going back to my bed.”

Seamus grabs Dean by the arm before he’s managed to clamber off the edge of the bed. “Dean,” he says, looking into his eyes through those mad, mad eyelashes. _“T’hanks.”_

Dean wants to ask what he’s being thanked for: the hurried concealment of the evening’s activities or Seamus’s first kiss? But he can hear a thunder of footsteps and Ron’s continued speculation on Hermione’s Yule Ball date just outside the door, so he dives into his bed as Seamus dives under his covers. He hurriedly grabs his current sketchbook and charcoal set from the bedside table as he goes. He throws the sketchbook open to a random page as the other boys open the door to the room (a sketch of Seamus doing homework he drew a few days ago, as it happens). Harry goes straight to his own bed and draws his curtains firmly shut, presumably sick of hearing Ron’s monologue.

“Oh,” Neville says brightly as he passes Dean’s bed on the way to his own. “You two _are_ here. I was wondering if you were up on the tower roof after hours again.” (Dean likes to draw landscapes from the top of Gryffindor tower.)

“Too late for that, Nev,” Dean says. He’s trying to sound like his usual, friendly self, but he’s currently suppressing homicidal thoughts about Mr. and Mrs. Finnegan, Lavender Brown, and, most of all, Seamus himself, so he’s not very successful. “I was drawing Seamus doing his remedial potions shit, but he fell asleep.” He jerks his head in the direction of Seamus’s bed. Seamus is not doing a very good job of feigning sleep, but Dean’s the only one in this dorm who knows Seamus well enough to really know that.

“Ah,” Neville says, climbing into his own four-poster. “Night, then, Dean.”

“Night, Neville,” Dean says. 

It isn’t until then that Dean realizes that Ron Weasley is lingering in the space between their two beds, squinting at him with shrewd suspicion. Ron, Dean realized sometime during second year, is as remarkably insightful about everyone else as he is oblivious about himself -- it’s tough to hide shit from him, and Dean’s not feeling up to it tonight.

“You alright, mate?” Ron asks. 

Dean employs his only foolproof method for distracting Ron from the matter at hand, and he doesn’t feel guilty at all. “Seamus is taking Lavender and I’m taking Hannah Abbott,” he says. “Hermione wouldn’t go with a Slytherin, even to piss you off, mate. So I guess that leaves Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw? Or maybe an Upper Years Gryffindor?”

“Yeah,” Ron says, his gaze turning obviously, sharply from Dean, inwards. “Reckon you’re right, mate.” He retreats to his own four-poster, and Dean is left alone, at last, watching Seamus not sleep in his bed.

His face is turned in Dean’s direction. His eyes are closed, but not relaxed -- more like he’s _trying_ to keep them shut, but without obviously squeezing them shut. He usually sleeps with his bedspread and blankets all the way up to his chin, but tonight they’re pooled around his waist -- he must be hot in the woollen sweater. His fists are clenched in his sheets and his hair is still in disarray. His medal is resting against the mattress beside him, the chain pulled straight, diagonally, by gravity.

Dean wonders if Seamus knows he’s staring. He decides Seamus probably does, but, either way, he doesn’t open his eyes, even when it’s clear that Harry, Ron, and Neville have all retreated to sleep.

Dean wonders, too, what his own parents would say if he told them he’d snogged another boy. They’d be fairly shocked, to be sure. There would be questions. Worries. Probably a bit of shouting. But he knows, as instinctively as Seamus seemed to know his own parents, that all that would pass, that they’d be accepting -- happy, even. They’d like Seamus -- loyal, friendly Seamus, who welcomed Dean into the Wizarding world with uncanny generosity, who gets mostly good marks, who makes such a show of trying to use magic to turn water into whiskey but who’d never tried the latter until this summer, under Dean’s influence, and even then he’d choked and swore -- they’d like Seamus better than Kaia.

For one small moment, Dean feels happy, for himself, because they’re his.

Then he feels angry, first at Seamus’s parents, and then, irrationally, at Seamus himself. Seamus, he decides, can certainly ask him to go back to his own bed, but he can’t ask him to _forget._ Not when Dean wants to remember every detail. 

Dean flips to the next blank page in his sketchbook. He picks up his charcoal again -- not as a prop, but for real -- and he begins to draw.

**Author's Note:**

> 3/23/18 ETA: I was re-reading parts of _Deathly Hallows_ today, actually looking something up for another potential fic in this 'verse, and found that Dean Thomas's siblings are all sisters -- I hadn't remembered that the text specified that. Anyway, it's not terribly important to this fic, but I decided that I did, in fact, want to go back and make the change, so that I could leave the door open to potentially building from this story.


End file.
